It is eleven at night and there is a brown stain spreading across the kitchen ceiling. Every household in Britain has had some version of this scene, and every household has played the same second act: the frantic search, the phone numbers that ring out, the voicemail, the man who says he can come on Thursday. A generation ago the answer was a fat yellow directory and a lot of patience. Peterborough Trades is a bet that the modern answer is a message on your phone.
The verdict is simple. This is a small, fast, well-made idea for one city, and it is refreshingly free of fuss. It is also, by design, a front door. How good it is depends entirely on the people behind it, and that is the thing you should check for yourself.
Three buttons
The homepage asks one question and offers three answers: plumber, electrician or handyman. Pick one and a short sheet asks what the job is, your postcode, and how urgent it is, with options that read like real speech: “Emergency, today please”, “Within 2-3 days”, “This week”. Then it opens WhatsApp with your message already written. No account, no app, no form disappearing into an inbox. You are talking to someone in the medium you already use to talk to your family.
It is a mission structure, if you like, the way a good game breaks a crisis into steps: name the problem, say where you are, say how bad it is. Each step takes seconds. That is a real kindness when water is coming through the light fitting.
A map of the city
The site covers PE1 to PE7, and it names the places rather than just the postcodes: Werrington, Bretton, Orton, Stanground, Hampton, Eye, Thorney, out to Whittlesey and March. Anyone who has lived in Peterborough knows that Hampton and Werrington are different worlds twenty minutes apart, and a local service that knows the names knows the roads. The electrician page talks about the jobs people actually need, from electrical safety checks (EICRs) for landlords to home EV chargers. It promises no call-out charge and a free quote on WhatsApp.
Where it falls short
Here is the honest part. The site does not yet tell you who you are dealing with: there is no named business behind it, no address and no “about us”. It describes its tradespeople as vetted but does not say how. For a service that asks you to let a stranger into your home, that is the gap that matters most, and it should be the next thing fixed.
In the meantime, do what you should do with any trades service, however it was found. If the job involves gas, ask for the engineer’s Gas Safe number and check it on the Gas Safe Register before they start. For electrical work that needs certifying, check they belong to a registered competent person scheme, which lets them sign off their own work. Ask for the price in writing. A good tradesperson will not mind any of it.
Those checks are not a criticism of the idea, which is a good one. Getting help should be as easy as messaging a friend. Peterborough Trades has built the easy part beautifully. Now it has to show you the people.
Check gas engineers on the Gas Safe Register (gassaferegister.co.uk) and electricians on the Competent Person Register (competentperson.co.uk). Get the price in writing before work starts.
Zaq Qureshi is an engineer turned marketer with a career spent helping brands grow through digital.
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